In connection oriented systems, the scheduling and queuing of outgoing network packets presents several challenges. For example, outgoing packets of one flow may be held up by outgoing packets of another flow. Unlike receive-side processing, in transmit side processing the flow associated with an outgoing network packet is not readily identifiable by the packet. Operating systems typically insert a packet header that identifies the flow just before network transmission. To retain the order of the packets of a flow prior to network transmission, some operating systems multiplex outgoing network packets of several flows together into a single output queue. As a result, slower flows may slow unrelated faster flows.
Thus, there are general needs for processing outgoing information packets that improve throughput in server systems, and maintain packet order in outgoing flows.